Welcome to Thunderdome!

Let me give a big welcome to all the new volunteers, welcome to Thunderdome! Or as the name most people know of it by, Suriname! As I write this, the new group, the SUR 17’s have already been in the country; for what is it now… 4 months. So, what can I say, I’m a bit late for this welcome in blog land, but not to worry, I was there in person the night they arrived, so no hurt feelings…

But there are hurt feelings, sad but true, time to play the world’s smallest violin…when one group comes ones leaves, and since my last post all of the SUR 15’s have taken off back home to the New World, America. I’ve got to say it was great knowing them; we had some good times, well a bit more than some. We’ll meet again…on the flip side, seriously, it will be the flip side…how about that, anyway, much love going to the 15’s, have a great start on the rest of your life!

Yep, let’s see; once again months have passed since my last blog post, which was posted only a couple days after the new group arrived back in May, 4 months ago. So… what’s been going on down here in Thunderdome, I mean Suriname, well, a little…and a lot.

You might ask yourself, how it could be both, I’ve asked myself that question, and here’s what I’ve come up with…lot’s of waiting while at the same time making the most of the waiting. Huh? What? Still doesn’t make sense does it, well, let me clarify…So if we divide my time between official Peace Corps activities and other, I’m waiting on the Peace Corps activities. You remember, in my last post I had mentioned all those projects that I was working on or intended to start working on. Well, all that has been going; going well, but going slowly. Nothing anyone can do about that, it’s just the natural pace of life down here. This means that with my waiting around on these activities I’ve had some free time, well a little more than some, and to make the most of it I’ve been doing a lot when it comes to experiencing the life of Suriname. I won’t go into detail here, it’ll be too much writing, and instead, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. Go on, have a look…

A Year In The Making

…and here we are a year later, Wow! I can’t believe I just celebrated the one year anniversary of my service in the Peace Corps here in Suriname, crazy huh! This year especially has gone by fast; since my last blog post way back around New Year’s I’ve finally been able to really get comfortable in my community, in both personal and professional terms.

Starting off on the personal side of things, after I got back to site from my Christmas/New Year’s break in the city I started things out on a very positive note. For whatever reason I felt that things just “clicked”, I don’t know particularly why this happened, but it did which is great. I felt that my language and social skills improved to the point where they weren’t a hindrance, what a relief not to have to worry about such basics in communication. With my new found ability to actually communicate and interact with people normally I could be myself and really just live life.

Being able to be comfortable on a personal level had a direct effect on things on a professional level. Coming back from the Christmas/New Year’s break I hit the ground running. While in the city I prepared the basic framework for the health topic radio show that I conceived while at site before that break. I prepared a basic presentation with my ideas for the show including topics that would last at least a couple months. I showed this to the Peace Corps staff who approved of it, and then at site I started with the radio staff get them involved from the get go, they approved. I met with several of the village captains to clue them in, they approved, and at this moment I’m waiting for a meeting with the Poli-Clinic staff to get them involved since they’ll be key to the success of this project. So far it’s taken about 5 months to get to this point; it’s a very slow process….

As far as the radio show goes, my idea for the show is to create a general health topic radio show that can cover any topic related to health, because of this the show isn’t restricted to any specific topic and is open ended, it can go on forever since there’s essentially unlimited topics to choose from. I intend to brand the show as well, give it its own unique identity, where the community will refer to this show as itself. I noticed that the previous volunteer who put on two radio shows, the community always refers to these shows a his shows, and associates those show with him, so when he left the shows left. If I can give the show it own identity or brand then when I leave it won’t matter because I’ll have simply been one of the people who work for the show, not the show. So given that the radio show can go on possibly forever due to the amounts of possible topics and it in itself will be a brand I intend to eventually expand beyond the radio to print (posters), phone (SMS), and people (workshops). So, for example, say there’s a show on hypertension, while on the radio we discuss the topic, simultaneously there might be posters around the community on the topic, SMS messages sent out on the topic, and maybe a live workshop on the topic. While all of this being done under this same brand to give it uniformity and identity. That’s what I’m thinking.

Other things I’ve been doing around the community have been the continuation of the English lessons, they still going great, though now my idea is to eventually have my one student once he becomes proficient enough in the language to start teaching himself and take over the class. If I can get this done I think the turnout will be much higher since a member from the community will be the one teaching. Also, when I take off it won’t matter since I won’t be the one teaching, this would allow the class to continue after I take off. I’ve been looking into getting funding to secure life vests for a church in my community that actually meets downriver in the next village. I think I might have found a funding source that could be a win-win for everyone involved, it’s currently in the works. And aside from these 3 main projects I’ve done countless smaller, more personal things for people throughout the community, things that are just apart of life, helping out where I can.

That about wraps it up, I’m about to enter the second year of my service which is looking to be like its going to be a great year, stay tuned for more to come.

Ending The Year Right

Happy New Year!

Hi everyone, let me first say Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, I hope you all had a great one; myself, I can’t complain, both Christmas and New Year’s Eve were great. I’ll describe what went on in more detail later, but first let’s talk about what I’ve been doing since my last blog post, way back in October.

Out in my village things are going well, since last time when I was in the city I listed out all the program goals that I had, I have since started on some of them. The easiest one, giving English lessons I started not too long after I got back. I have class two days a week, on Mondays and Fridays, the location has changed 3 times since I started, with the location currently being one of the stores in the village. While not being the best location it works, I’m still looking for another and think I might have one picked, the local dance club on the island, I need to sort out the details with the owner, so we’ll see, just imagine it though. Every class for the most part I have different students, with one exception, one who comes to every class and is serious about learning, this is big. Since he wants to put the effort in it really is very motivating for me and keeps me encouraged. I imagine in due time I’ll pick up more who will be just as dedicated.

In an attempt to get the word out that I know something about electrical work I installed power in one of the captains’ houses. A while ago I took a look at his house and drew out a wiring diagram and made a material list of everything that he would need to wire his house, he eventually ended up picking up all the materials in the city (Paramaribo) and brought them back. Over three days we wired his house; it went smoothly and turned out very well, check out the photos I took. So far word has spread, I fixed one of the Gaanmans women’s houses, and one of the other captains’ house. We’ll see how this will go, I would like to eventually turn this into some type of workshop to teach the villages how to do this on their own since it’s really easy, there’s no construction code to follow!

Back in early November a team of 3 from UNICEF came out, 2 of which were Peace Corps volunteers who work in the UNICEF office. They’re working on a program called WASH which stands for Water and Sanitation Hygiene. It covers a very broad spectrum from simple hand washing hygiene to the implementation of water systems, pretty much anything that has to do with water. The program is in its infancy here, which means that currently the UNICEF team was just informing the village leaders of the program in the first place and that it wants to work with the village from the start in order to make this project work. We’ll see what happens, since village input is key the direction of the project can go anywhere.

Other than that I’ve been gearing up to prepare to start some of the other projects that I would like to do. And when I say “gearing up to prepare to start” I mean trying to get to some definitive starting point since what I’ve been at is just way to abstract to organize and once I do get an idea that has some substance I think of a way to improve it changing the original idea. By the time you hear from me again I’ll have this all sorted out, and then its full speed ahead.

As for general day to day life it’s going day by day. I started to take my boat out every day in the morning for about an hour to two, good times. When I first started to couldn’t steer the boat worth shit, but now I’ll take on anyone. We also got power; a crew came from the city and replaced the whole system, all the power poles and the wire. The old power poles were rotting and some had fallen over which meant no power until replaced. The funny thing was that the generator was almost brand new but couldn’t be run because of this; it was down for around 9 months. Now every evening we have power, the fuel lasts for around 2 months before it runs dry, and takes about 2 weeks to resupply. In early December it ran out and right before I came into the city we were resupplied just before I took off. And… other than that are the day to day happenings…you know…

Take a look below, I took several random photos and videos, some of the monkey that lives behind me, some of the airplane, some of some other stuff… I did get a new camera, so next post you’re going to see a ton of photos and videos all which will be quality.

Oh, and as for Christmas and New Years they were both great, both being some of the best I’ve had. For Christmas one of the volunteers had her family down here and was staying in another volunteers house who herself was in America for the holidays. She invited several of us to come have Christmas with her and her family, it couldn’t have been better, she did good, we even had fireworks! As for New Years, I and two other volunteers kicked it with some other American and Dutch people, forming what I like to call a fun mob. We rolled from place to place and without expressing any details I can tell you that we took advantage of what New Years in Paramaribo has to offer without a doubt.

One last thing, here’s a list of all the books I’ve read this year while in Peace Corps

The Cosmic Serpent – Jeremy Narby
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
The Burn – Vassily Aksyonov
The Saga of California: This Promised Land – Robert Olney Easton
The Coffee Trader – David Liss
Three Cups of Tea – Greg Mortenson
Invisible Monsters – Chuck Palahniuk
Night Sky – Robert Burnham
Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer
East of Eden – John Steinbeck
Culture Jam – Kalle Lasn
Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
Mein Kampf – Adolf Hitler
The Riverbones – Andrew Westoll

Once again, Happy New Year! Here’s to 2011!